‘La Traviata’ revival expressive, impressive

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20100511__La_Traviata__revival_expressive__impressive.html

Heggie’s Moby-Dick a whale of an opera

It’s glorious and it’s gripping; it’s grand — and
it’s good! Indeed, Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick,
premiered by Dallas Opera in its handsome new Winspear Opera House on April 30,
is a work that restores meaning to basic vocabulary made banal by overuse
through the decades.

Canny tale of a femme fatale

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/79659804-5c51-11df-93f6-00144feab49a.html

Antony Walker: Big things lie ahead for opera conductor

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/09/AR2010050902954.html

‘Amelia’: Seattle Opera embraces challenge on a grand scale

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011825569_vietopera10m.html?prmid=head_more

Juan Diego FlÛrez, Barbican, London

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ee20f1dc-5c44-11df-93f6-00144feab49a.html

Modern English Song Alive and Well

London’s Wigmore Hall is one of the world’s great centres for art song. This recital, by Susan Bickley and Iain Burnside, specialists in the genre, showed that English language art song is alive and thriving.

In a Laboratory, Turning Traditional Notions of Opera Upside Down

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/arts/music/08vox.html?src=mv

Central City: the little opera company that can

You don’t have to be Asian to sing Madama Butterfly, but if you’ve got a top soprano from that part of the world, it adds another dimension of reality to Puccini’s tear-drenched verismo.

Rossini’s Armida, New York

Armida is fabulous. That is to say, the story is a fable. Rinaldo,
the very type of Christian warrior, is torn between his duty to lead the First
Crusade and the sensual ecstasies offered by the beautiful sorceress Armida.